Once Upon a Broken Heart

“But Evangeline knew the difference. She also knew that sometimes there was a murky space in between good and evil. That was the space she’d thought she’d entered that morning when she’d gone into Jacks’s church to pray for a favor. But she’d made a mistake, and now it was time to fix it.”

Here, Evangeline has just discovered Luc, Marisol, and their wedding guests have been turned to stone as a result of her deal with Jacks. Jacks says he’s helping her get over Luc and achieve wealth and a better life, but faced with people turned to statues because of something she did, Evangeline can’t comprehend his logic. Her humanity allows her to see suffering where Jacks’s Fate nature shows him an opportunity regardless of who it might hurt. Evangeline sees the world in terms of good (things that help) and bad (things that harm) with little room for the gray area in-between. By contrast, Jacks’s view is all gray.

“Evangeline didn’t want to cry so much as she wanted to find a way back in time, to before. To before Agnes, to before Luc, to before she’d lost both her parents. She just wanted one more hug from her father. One more moment of her mother smoothing her hair. The pain she felt at missing Luc wasn’t even a scratch in comparison to the absence of her mother and father. She still wanted Luc, but what she really wanted was the life and all the love that she’d lost.”

This passage of Evangeline’s thoughts comes after she’s returned to life and realizes Luc is gone. After being a statue deprived of caring or company for weeks, she begins to understand the different types of love, as well as how the source of affection matters less than affection at all. She doesn’t miss Luc as much as she thought, which foreshadows her understanding that her love for Luc was born of needing someone to care about after her father’s death. She also realizes that she craves her parents more than Luc, which suggests they are and will be more important for the rest of the book/series.

“In the North, fairytales and history were treated as one and the same because their stories and histories were all cursed. Some tales couldn’t be written down without bursting into flames, others couldn’t leave the North, and many changed every time they were shared, becoming less and less real with every retelling. It was said that every Northern tale had started as true history, but over time, the Northern story curse had twisted all the tales until only bits of truth remained.”

Spells and magic are a daily part of life in the Magnificent North. Here, Garber delves deeper into the history of magic and spells, describing the North’s complex and evolving history. It is likely that the North’s cursed history is related to the former royal family and the Valory Arch. These lines also speak to how stories change over time. Even without magic, real-world history changes with every retelling until parts of it are lost.

“Evangeline loved the story because she, too, was a Fox, even if she wasn’t the sort who could turn into an animal. She might have also had a tiny crush on the archer. Evangeline made her mother tell her the tale over and over. But since this story was cursed, every time her mother neared the end, she would suddenly forget what she’d been saying. She could never tell Evangeline if the archer kissed his fox-girl and they lived happily together forever, or if he killed the fox-girl, ending their story in death.”

This is the introduction of “The Ballad of the Archer and the Fox,” which represents how the North twists its histories and stories. Since fairy tales and history are one and the same in the North and the ballad seems to be about Evangeline (the fox) and Jacks (the archer), it may be that events of Northern history repeat themselves. Perhaps there were several foxes and archers over the years, but the story can’t be complete until one archer/fox pair finishes it.

“And Evangeline felt further convinced that going north for Nocte Neverending was exactly what she and Marisol both needed. Marisol might have needed it even more. Evangeline couldn’t believe she’d considered not asking her. Looking at her now, Evangeline couldn’t imagine her stepsister even thinking about stealing Luc from her, and even if she had, wasn’t Luc the one Evangeline should have really been blaming?”

This passage is one of the instances where Evangeline is convinced Marisol never cursed Luc. Even though the opposite is true, and Marisol did put a love spell on Luc, Evangeline’s thoughts make a good point. Up until this point, Evangeline hasn’t once considered that Luc did something unkind. Since she doesn’t know the truth about Marisol yet, Luc’s betrayal should be Luc’s fault, but Evangeline chooses to blame Marisol because she doesn’t want to believe Luc could hurt her. This idea extends to cheating in real-life relationships. Often, people blame the person someone cheated with and not the cheater, which is illogical since it took both people acting together to cheat.

“We all know that Prince Apollo has said he might not choose any bride, and once Nocte Neverending begins, it may never come to an end. But I would not place bets on that happening. I have it upon good authority that Apollo has his eyes on several ladies, and I have a few excellent theories as to whom these young women might be.”

From one of many articles in the Daily Rumor, this example demonstrates how the gossip sheet twists truths. The information about Apollo’s other possible picks may have a grain of truth, but since we never meet half of these girls, it’s difficult to say. Later in the article, LaLa’s famed beauty and dismissal as a viable choice foreshadows her being the Unwed Bride. Her Fate nature may be influencing the reporter away from her as a real contender.

“Evangeline tried to ignore the nearby whispers and the ever-present pit in her stomach. She was in the Magnificent North, home to her mother’s fairytales, surrounded by fantastic sights, and about to enjoy a dragon-roasted apple. But the murmurs were like villains at the end of a story. They just wouldn’t die.”

Here, Evangeline takes in the North and tries to enjoy the magical landscape as much as possible. Her enjoyment is dampened by the whispers about her and Jacks at the prince’s dinner the night before. The Daily Rumor reported Evangeline was a risky bet for seeming to favor Jacks over Apollo, which makes Evangeline uncomfortable. For one, her feelings toward Jacks are complicated. For another, Jacks had her give Apollo the first kiss of their deal the night before, and she’s nervous about what will happen as a result. The previous Daily Rumor article pegged Evangeline as a possibility and a darling. Now, she’s a risk, showing how the gossip sheet holds sway over public opinion.

“Marisol was not the rumors and the lies that had been printed about her. And if she and Marisol showed up tonight together, smiling and happy and untouched by fear, people would be able to see the truth and stop believing all the lies.”

These lines of Evangeline’s thoughts come after the Daily Rumor that reports on Marisol being the cursed bride. First, it points out that people are not what words say about them or what those words make others believe. Evangeline’s approach to debunking the rumors involves pretending they aren’t bothersome, which has great potential to work. People are influenced by the actions and words of others. If Evangeline and Marisol don’t act in accordance with the Daily Rumor’s report, the article will have less weight.

“Her heart kicked out several extra beats. She wasn’t doing anything illicit or wrong. She was trying to do something right, something noble. But her heart must have felt a threat, for it continued to race as the door swung open and she slipped inside the carriage.”

Here, Evangeline has snuck out of the palace to meet with Jacks and discuss the love spell she believes her kiss put on Apollo. Evangeline’s main motivation throughout the book is doing the right and noble thing, and here, she finds herself clashing with those ideals. Though she believes what she’s doing is right, the act of going behind Apollo’s back feels wrong. She doesn’t have proof he’s under a spell, and she fears that, if he isn’t, he’ll see her actions as a sign she doesn’t trust him and his love. The overall message of these lines is that doing the “right” thing doesn’t always result in feeling good, and “right” isn’t always easy to know.

“‘Wrong and right are so subjective.’ Jacks sighed. ‘You say what I’ve done to Apollo is wrong. I say I’ve done him a favor, and I’m doing one for you as well. I suggest you take it—marry the prince and let him make you a princess, and then a queen.’”

This conversation between Evangeline and Jacks shows again how Jacks has a morally gray definition of right and wrong while Evangeline lives by belief in the black-and-white duality of wrongness and rightness. As at Luc and Marisol’s wedding, Jacks believes spelling Apollo’s feelings does him a favor by making him happy and giving him someone to love. By contrast, Evangeline is uncomfortable with Apollo’s obsessive love, and her definition of its wrongness may be partly based on how she doesn’t want to be part of it. Jacks’s observation about Apollo’s feelings speaks to the definition of “real.” Apollo doesn’t know he’s under a spell, and his love for Evangeline feels real to him as a result. Emotions are based in belief. If we believe we feel a certain way about something, nothing will change that except having our emotions and beliefs questioned, which is what breaking Apollo’s spell would do.

“If you wish to break the spell on Apollo, your only option is to marry him. Or do I need to remind you how desperate a broken heart makes you? How it hurts so much that it compelled you to make a deal with a devil like me? Do you really want to call off your wedding and leave Apollo like that—forever in love with someone who will never feel the same way? […] It wasn’t that long ago that I saw you in my church, willing to promise me almost anything to make the pain stop. Was that a lie? Or have you already forgotten the way heartbreak rips apart the soul piece by piece, how it turns you into a masochist, making you long for the thing that just eviscerated you until there’s nothing left of you to be destroyed?”

Jacks and Evangeline made a deal that Jacks would break Apollo’s spell if Evangeline married the prince. Evangeline still doesn’t feel right about the spell, though, and here, Jacks throws her earlier pain back at her to make his point. Jacks’s very nature is to be heartbroken and desperate for love. To hide this, he mocks the feelings of others. It’s unclear if he’s talking about himself or Evangeline in the latter half of this quotation.

“Evangeline closed her eyes. It was the same thing he said every night, and then every night she stood there watching and listening until the tips of her hair were turned to frost and her breath became ice. Freezing along with Apollo felt like penance for what she’d helped Jacks do to him. It was tempting to do the same thing tonight, to simply stand there and disregard everything that had happened in the Fortuna Vaults, marry Apollo, break the spell, and hope that they could start over. Just because he was cursed didn’t mean their story had to be cursed.”

Here, Evangeline stands on her balcony while Apollo serenades her from below. She is torn over her feelings about Apollo and breaking the curse. She feels letting him live this way is wrong, but she also enjoys being cared for so much. The final lines of this quotation call to the rules of curses. Evangeline makes the distinction between Apollo being cursed and their story being cursed. Apollo is spelled to love her, which is different from their romance being under a spell. It’s possible that they could still grow to love each other without the love spell. Just because one aspect of their relationship is cursed doesn’t mean the entirety of their relationship is doomed to fail.

“Evangeline had never understood why it had taken her so long to stop loving Luc. Even when she didn’t want to love him, the feeling had lingered. People called it falling out of love, but falling was easy. Letting go of Luc had been more like climbing the face of a rock. She’d clawed her way out, fighting to shake it off, to let it go, to find something else to hold on to.”

Evangeline thinks back on Luc and explores the power of emotion. “Falling” is often described for how people both enter and exit feelings of love. Falling “in” love makes sense—the sudden waterfall of strong emotions can drag us into love, even when we don’t realize it. Falling “out” of love, however, makes less sense according to Evangeline’s description. Strong emotions don’t just go away. They take time to work through and understand before we can come to terms with them and let them go. These lines also show that Evangeline’s love for Luc was more about needing someone than wanting him. She admits she was clinging to him and that she needed something else to cling on to in his absence.

“Months ago, she’d turned to stone, but now she felt as if she were turning to ice as Jacks trudged across what sounded like snow and then began to ascend what felt like an endless flight of stairs. She hoped that he was taking her somewhere warm. Warm would be very good. Although even if Jacks managed to thaw her eyes open and free her of the poison breaking her apart, it wouldn’t be enough to erase the fact that she was now a fugitive and a widow and an orphan. All she had was a Fate who she didn’t even trust or like—”

Prior to this passage, Evangeline and Jacks have just escaped the palace after Apollo’s believed death. Evangeline drank wine poisoned with LaLa’s tears, which makes her cry and think negative thoughts. It’s unclear if her thoughts are simply the poison or if she would have had such thoughts anyway. They feel true in the moment, but as Jacks pointed out earlier, Apollo’s love under the spell felt real to him. Curses and spells have the power to manufacture emotions and make it impossible to tell if those emotions are real.

“Evangeline looked like a fugitive princess. And even though that was exactly what she was, it was not what she’d been yesterday, and she felt a strange pit in her stomach as she realized that she would never be that girl again. She wasn’t the person she had been before. Maybe she hadn’t been that girl for a while. She’d known the day she’d entered Jacks’s church that whatever she did would change her, and now she was seeing the effect of that choice.”

LaLa has just finished preparing Evangeline for her visit to Chaos. The stark difference in her outfit to the wedding gown Evangeline wore the day before makes Evangeline realize how she and her life are constantly changing and also how change can sneak up on us. Her prayer to Jacks in the early chapters set change in motion, but it took so many rapid alterations in her life before she noticed all the micro-changes that led to her going from a simple girl who wanted a boy to a fugitive princess who needs to clear her name.

“Evangeline knew that Luc could never go back to being the boy he was, and she’d stopped being the girl she was. That girl would have believed that seeing Luc again meant that something wonderful would happen, that they’d receive a happy ending after all. But all this meeting guaranteed was that they would have a different ending. What sort of ending still had to be determined, but it would certainly be better than this. Even if Luc wasn’t her happily ever after, she couldn’t let their story finish here, with him in this cage and her running away.”

Jacks and Evangeline find Luc on their way out of Chaos’s stronghold, and Evangeline’s realizations here cement the changes she’s undergone. She still believes in happily-ever-after, but she no longer clings to it as her only hope. She’s beginning to understand that her ending isn’t dependent on anyone and that not everything is a sign of happiness to come. Her choice to help Luc escape his cage is a poor one, which shows the growth she still has to do. She may not believe seeing Luc is a sign, but she’s shared too much with him to fully let him go, even if doing so would be better for her wellbeing.

“‘It was terrible timing—and you have absolutely no sense when it comes to him,’ Jacks all but growled, jaw clenching in between his words. ‘For most people, I’m the worst thing that can happen to them. But not you. It’s as if you want that boy to destroy you, and he’s only human—or he was until you helped him change.’”

This reaction from Jacks towards Evangeline comes after they leave Luc and the vampires behind. Evangeline has just puzzled through events and concluded that Jacks might have cursed Luc to force Evangeline into his church. Though Evangeline claims she’s moved past Luc, part of her is still stuck on him, and rather than let that last bit go, she searches for anything else she can blame. Jacks makes a point here about Evangeline’s emotions—that she is almost willing to let Luc destroy her. Evangeline does realize this, but she chalks it up to the gift of strong emotions.

“This was why parts of Jacks’s story had twisted so painfully inside her. It wasn’t because she wanted Jacks. She didn’t want Jacks. She just wanted someone to want her the way Jacks had wanted this girl. And she didn’t want it to be because of a spell or a curse. Evangeline wanted a real love powerful enough to break a spell, which was exactly what Jacks wanted, too.”

Here, Jacks has told Evangeline what happened with Princess Donatella, and Evangeline puzzles out uncomfortable truths about herself. She realizes love and hope are her weaknesses and also that she will still do anything to find both. She also finally admits that her choices have not been “good” or “noble,” but questionable. She did what she did out of a desperation to be loved, and that allows her to conclude that she and Jacks aren’t so different, after all, something she’s fiercely opposed up until this point.

“Warning! There is a cost to every spell. More truths than people want are often revealed. Additional effects of Serum for Truths are usually temporary, and they may include fatigue, impaired decision-making and judgment, dizziness, the inability to tell a lie, and the urge to reveal any unspoken truths.”

While Jacks sleeps following his encounter with vampire venom, Evangeline searches a spell book in his library, and these are the love and truth spells she reads. The love spell incriminates Marisol as the woman who procured oil from Chaos, and after it’s revealed Tiberius believes he killed Apollo, it may be assumed he used leftover oil from Marisol’s stash to do so. It is unclear how Apollo survived the oil’s toxicity, something which will likely be explored in the sequel. The truth spell side effects may suggest Jacks is affected by such a spell. He is fatigued, and at the end of Chapter 45, he revealed that he influenced Evangeline coming to the North, something he likely wouldn’t have told her if his thoughts were his own.

“This arch may only be unlocked with a key that has not yet been forged. Conceived in the north, and born in the south, you will know this key, because she will be crowned in rose gold. She will be both peasant and princess, a fugitive wrongly accused, and only her willing blood will open the arch.”

Here, Tiberius tells Evangeline the Valory Arch prophecy. The prophecy holds many requirements and may only be opened if all of them are met. It is unclear if Evangeline is the only prophesied key for the arch or if there have been people before her who never fulfilled the terms. If she doesn’t open the arch, another girl may be born later to fulfill the prophecy. Given the living nature of magic, it may be that the prophecy actively works to bring its terms to pass. It may also be that whatever’s locked in the Valory Arch can influence events outside and somehow brought about Evangeline’s birth.

“She cried once more for Apollo, she cried with relief that she was still alive, and she cried for Tiberius. Not for the part of him that had tried to kill her but for the part of him that had killed his brother by mistake. She didn’t know what it was like to have a sibling, and given all that had happened between her and Marisol, she doubted that she would ever understand. But Evangeline understood how it felt to lose family, and she could not fathom being responsible for that loss.”

This passage comes after Tiberius admits he poisoned Apollo. Tiberius’s tears suggest he feels remorse for what he did, especially since he’s under a truth spell that’s affecting his emotions. These lines comment on how our emotions toward someone can be complex. Evangeline dislikes how Tiberius has treated her in the last several pages and doesn’t understand how he could have killed Apollo. At the same time, she understands his grief, even if he brought that grief upon himself.

“Evangeline couldn’t blame everything that had happened on Marisol. Marisol hadn’t been the one to poison her or Apollo. But Evangeline did wonder what would have happened if Marisol had not put a spell on Luc. Would fate have intervened in another way to turn Evangeline into the girl in the Valory Arch prophecy? Or would things have worked out differently for her and Luc and Apollo and Tiberius? Was she destined to end up here, or was it just one of many possible paths? She would never know, but she had a feeling this question would always haunt her.”

One of the main themes of Once Upon a Broken Heart is that Endings Are Not Finite. Here, Evangeline contemplates her own story and the infinite ways it could have ended. Every choice she or someone around her made could have had an endless number of outcomes, yet the choices aligned to bring her where she is now. The final line of this quotation speaks to regret and the uncertainty of not knowing. Evangeline regrets not making different choices, but even if she had, there is no guarantee those choices would have resulted in better outcomes. Given everything that’s gone wrong, though, she wants to believe things would have been better, and that desire leaves her feeling haunted.

“When she passed one of Apollo and Tiberius, with arms around each other’s shoulders, she had to pause. Apollo looked so happy and vibrant. It was the same way he’d often looked at her. She’d thought his expressions had been pure enchantment, but now it was painfully tempting to wonder if things had been realer than she’d believed, if she’d been right to hope they could have really fallen in love. But she would never know. What would have been was a question that no one ever knew the answer to.”

These lines also call to how stories don’t have finite endings. Perhaps without Jacks’s spell, Apollo would have loved Evangeline, and they might have lived happily ever after. Again, Evangeline regrets that things didn’t work out differently so she could have experienced better outcomes. Apollo’s closeness with Tiberius in the painting questions why Tiberius felt the need to kill Apollo. If Tiberius wanted to prevent the Valory Arch from being opened, it would have made more sense to kill Evangeline. Unless Tiberius has hidden motives the truth potion didn’t force him to reveal, it is unclear why he let Apollo and Evangeline’s wedding happen before he made his move.